Black Armor Weapons Pack Early Access
Namco Bandai revealed today that Dark Souls II Black Armor Editions and Collector’s Editions will receive a voucher that will allow players to unlock a set of 5 weapons and 5 shields. These weapons and shields are in every version of the game, but these players will have access to them from the beginning.
- Black Flamestone Dagger and Black Flamestone Parma – A dagger and shield encrusted in Black Flamestone both found in the Gutter at Black Gulch. Even though they are heavier than a normal dagger and shield, the Flamestone crystal’s unique properties make the dagger extremely sharp and give the shield high resistance to damage.
- Yellow Quartz Longsword and Yellow Quartz Shield – A straight sword and small shield hardened with yellow quartz both uncovered at the bottom of the Iron Keep. Even though these items can break easily due to their high level of corrosion, they are exceptionally light and their power to inflict damage has not declined.
- Bound Hand Axe and Bound Wooden Shield – A brutal hand axe and shield found in the Undead Purgatory. Both items are wrapped in chains and thorns to cause additional bleeding on enemies. Both the axe and shield have diminished in overall slashing power but their ability to deliver pain has been deliberately increased.
- Homunculus Mace and Homunculus Wooden Shield – A mace and shield with spherical protrusions found in Aldia’s Keep. Although heavier-than-normal maces and shields, the hard protrusions greatly increase the striking power of the mace as well as the shield’s defensive capabilities.
- Transgressor’s Staff and Transgressor’s Leather Shield – A staff and leather shield entwined with an unknown and seemingly lackluster element; these items are found in the Dark Chasm of Old. They have become a catalyst for sorcery and hex and cause an effect known as Darkness.
These items are the same as previously revealed retailer-specific Japanese bonuses. What do you think of the designs? How do you feel about weapon early access? Let us know in the comments!
Information courtesy of Namco Bandai
41 responses to “Dark Souls 2 Preorder Early Access Weapons”
The transgressor’s stuff looks pretty nifty, hopefully it doesn’t take TOO long to get them without the preorder.
this is the only set I would actualy use lol looks nice
Black Flamestone Dagger and Parma look cool, for sure. As does the Transgressors Staff and shield. Can’t wait to see what they can actually do.
The accompanying lore is (by far) quite titillating!! 😀
Those are some nice troll weapons.
I don’t have a problem with pre-order-bonuses, but I would have preferred additional art or other gimmicks over in-game advantages.
Not impressed, always disliked the whole pre-order bonus in games where there was multiplayer involved.
They doesn’t look like real efficient weapons, they look very heavy, not sharp, bulky.
Maybe they are good but they look different.
BTW, it probably will make the game a lot easier to to have weapons that other player don’t have. For me they should have come up with another idea to give an incentive to preorder, e.g. another video cut scene.
I’m not really on board with having weapons “early” for this game. Even if there’s no trolling done, here’s a list of ten items I will no longer be excited to find.
Bonus thought: My Prediction is that “Aldia” is the spider entity they teased in the Cursed Trailer.
Replying to oneself is not a sign of mental health problems I swear.
Sounds good to me too.
Anyway, silver lining here… but it does mean at least ten items that will be able to go right into the wiki. Plus locations maybe, etc.
These weapons were already going to be available to Japanese players early on, so I believe having early access for preorders across the pond is not a bad balancing move. Personally, I’m not likely to use any of these, but I am intrigued and excited for the design concepts and story elements behind them.
I do like seeing the lore elements woven into the gear’s details again. Item descriptions are one thing but I always loved the nuance of the visual cues. Makes the lore seem more alive.
I think these are pretty cool – I’ll probably give them all a go at some stage. As Emergence and Ahhotep mention, the lore elements are intriguing. The way each set is tied to a specific location and the differing properties of the gear correspond directly to those locations is very neat. I’m already enjoying making up back stories for the characters that might have once wielded the gear!
I can’t imagine any of the sets will be truly OP at the start of the game. Sure, the devs/pubs want to secure as many pre-orders as possible but I can’t see them wanting to disrupt a PvE difficulty curve they have clearly put a hell of a lot of thought into. By the time PvP becomes important it’s likely that players will already have picked up superior equipment.
Skarekrow – I’m with you on the point about no longer being able to discover them in game. Having weapons and armor in your inventory that has been earned in game definitely beats having it there because you’ve committed to buying the game pre-release! But judging by the size and scope of the game, they’ll be lots of other item hunting to keep us occupied 🙂
Not a fan of preorder bonuses either, but they gotta make a buck right?
these things just feel like examples of upgrade paths to me for some reason… and the places listed in the descriptions feel like where you go to pick up the upgrade materials, also the bound shield… how exactly does it bleed an opponent? do you have to hit them with it or do they get bleed build up by hitting the shield?
the black flamestone path sounds like the bladestone path from demons souls, as it makes things sharper and the homunculus stuff sounds like the greystone path being that its on a bashing str weapon,
and the bound stuff would be the tearing upgrade path…
also remember in demons souls how you could find weapons upgraded along the various different paths in game, like the crescent falchion or blessed mace, these things may be like those.
These are interesting on a whole imo. I have to admit i don’t like that i will get them early on but it is nice to get an idea in advance of what path would be good for what from an example. (as well as my hope of them finally making a way to know what your opponent is using path wise by a visual) What does make me curious are the staff and shield…Because now i’m thinking one of two things. A) its a new weapon that you would find elsewhere OR B) its an upgrade path for the staff which might mean that talismans (maybe) and catalysts (Staffs whatever they are) get an upgrade path of their own which would be very interesting imo. Makes me wonder if maybe they are other paths they are bringing back as well as any new ones.
How would you like your eggs!?
AW YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
Well…since this is already a reality, I just want the Longsword!
Yellow Quartz path needs some tartar control toothpaste.
Those don’t sound very overpowered, thankfully. Nothing like the bonus items/spells you got from the DLC in DKS1.
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I don’t expect them to be too OP. As typical with DS, they have built in disadvantages to go with their advantages. plus much of a weapon’s damage is built in through scaling.
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Yet I know this won’t be enough to prevent early game ‘easy mode’
If so, then it should be priced fairly high amount of souls & ONLY available once to purchase; since one or two of them break easily with good AR. Should make farming souls difficult since you start with scrub equips, unless you know what your doing.
>I have a feeling it will just mean they will be available for sale at a vendor rather than having to find them.
I’ve pre-ordered the black armour edition but just now seeing images each of these weapons and shields I don’t think I’m even going to bother using the voucher. They look utterly horrible! Are these supposed to be weapons with the different upgrade paths? Or are they just unique weapons? I really hope it’s the latter.
I dislike the pre-order bonus too, but I decided not use the code for these weapons unless I really have to. On the other hand what if these weapons are to be picked up at the location they are described in. I read you get them from the beginning, but what if it meant “the first quarter(or 1/xth) of the game”. That’d be nice then.
I’ve preordered the game, but these things are easily going in DkS 2’s version of the bottomless box, without having been used.
I’d rather not have pre-order bonuses for the Souls series, whether they’re just early access or not. It just doesn’t sit well with me.
Either way, it won’t bother me much. I won’t use them simply because I dislike the way they all look, aside from the catalyst. If other people use them, whatever. Have fun.
Theyre all available in game, so Its gonna feel all the more satisfying when i discover these legitimately from hours of searching, or ‘playing Dark Souls’ as I like to call it.
I’ve got a collector’s edition pre-ordered, but don’t like the idea of preorder gear bonuses in Dark Souls. This is the one series I think everyone should start with the same playing field for aside from basic character selection, because it’s the common experience and struggle that unites us as a fanbase. If these items really are handed out from the start to a select few, they’ll likely allow you to move through the game much more easily, gather even better gear at low level, and then return to the start for griefing, griefing, griefing. Just another reason to stick with the Deprived class regardless of your purchase level.
Just popping in to let everyone know that you there’s discussion also going on in the blog that Fex linked. That also has the pictures and such of everything. While you’re over at the Fextralife Blog side o’ things (because you’re all going there now right?) definitely check out some of the recent articles if you haven’t yet.
Superdude100001 and twilightwarwolf just made some great additions.
And as always, everyone is welcome to become a contributor.
Finally:
[opinion on this topic]
I don’t know how I feel about this. In-game preorder bonuses are exactly the kind of thing I was hoping From and Bandai Namco were going to avoid with this series. Just handing weapons to players from the start because they bought the game before it was out doesn’t mesh well with the idea of having to actually go out and find the items you want and need to make your way through the world. I suppose it’s nice that the items are already in the game rather than straight-up unique DLC weapons, but simply handing them to the player from the start still doesn’t seem right to me.
Well that’s cool, I’m glad they are just early access weapons because up until now they seemed to be exclusive preorder weapons. I mean granted I never really cared for them because they look so odd but I was disappointed at first with thinking them being exclusive preorders for Japan but if they are in the game and we are just getting early access that sounds a bit better.
Hey, congrats on having Namco work beside you so openly then!
How I think this will impact the game? I think this is probably cool of them. This is early access to each of the new weapon classes, yes, but the weapons and shields they put them on seem designed explicitely to make the least use possible out of the upgrade path, while still allowing pre-order players the ability to see how each of the upgrade paths will impact their character, and make a quicker decision about where they are headed to.
Also it seems we can upgrade catalysts and talismans now? I look forward to customizing my mage with even more layers than ever before! But what of my personal thoughts?
While I doubt this is the way that the games spiritual father would have wanted to do things, I doubt it will very much hurt things in the end. Going more based on demons souls (the game these upgrade paths most resemble), I doubt the different paths will too directly change the impact of early game events. They likely will be not much if any stronger than the weapons we start out with, while giving us the ability to quicker customize our character. In this case, I don’t feel more options is a bad thing, and I look forward to trying each of them out in turn when my deprived warrior gets to first hold them.
I’m very glad that these are only “Early access” weapons and not Preorder exclusives; they seem very nice. Although, I doubt many fans will actually want to start with 5 sets of items. It looks like a good bonus if appropriately balanced, letting players have a couple more options early game, where your equipment is usually limited.
I merged the topics, Namco had given us the information so we had a blog article ready. Spread the word
mind getting me a screenshot or otherwise making the information available to those of us whom refuse to have a facebook account?
This is an excerpt of an article from the Fextralife Blog.
To read the full article and/or comment on the article, please click here
Black Armor Weapons Pack Early Access
Namco Bandai revealed today that Dark Souls II Black Armor Editions and Collector’s Editions will receive a voucher that will allow players to unlock a set of 5 weapons and 5 shields. These weapons and shields are in every version of the game, but these players will have access to them from the beginning.
You can find more information in the Weapons and Shields page of the wiki!
Black Flamestone Dagger and Black Flamestone Parma – A dagger and shield encrusted in Black Flamestone both found in the Gutter at Black Gulch. Even though they are heavier than a normal dagger and shield, the Flamestone crystal’s unique properties make the dagger extremely sharp and give the shield high resistance to damage.
Yellow …
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